Why the Amazon Dash Wand could bring down box box retailers

Consumers are cutting out the middleman, and it’s looking more like the middleman is Walmart.

Online sales rose about 15% last year, according to the U.S. Commerce department. The total haul was around $400 billion, or 8% of all retail sales for the year.

Back when I worked in IT at a large consumer electronics retailer, we used to say that online sales were infinitesimal — the equivalent of one or two stores in an entire chain. That’s not true anymore. Amazon sales were around 27% of all retail sales, thanks in part to the free two-day and a bot called Alexa, which makes the entire process ultra smooth.